How I Earned $120 in Amazon Credit in 15 Minutes

The BF and I will be moving in June and we have been looking for ways to downsize our home. One of the areas we touched on was our entertainment center. Prior to moving in together, I had accumulated 3 crates and one zip up case full of DVDs. I own 7 game consoles and have owned more than $1,000 worth of games in my lifetime. I have owned classics such as Super Smash Bros and Donkey Kong to the entire Tekken and Crash Bandicoot series.

I was one of those people who hoarded video games and movies. I’ll put it to you this way if I liked a particular movie, I owned it. If it was my favorite, I had the special edition copy and pre-release stuff for it. I’ll have you know that now I haven’t spent more than about $12 on a DVD in years.

After much discussion with the BF, we finally decided it was time to let go of my precious DVDs and some of my video games. I had some movies that had never even been opened yet, and some of my video games hadn’t been played in a long time.

I began posting my games and movies on Craigslist as a set. I sold them for $3-5 a movie and priced the games based on eBay and Amazon listings. While I had success selling a few games, I had one offer on my movies. She was willing to pay just 50 cents for each movie! I told her she must be joking. I realized after months of trying to sell my games and movies that Craigslist was just not the place for it.

I listed some of the more popular games on eBay, but I couldn’t offer the prices my competition was selling for. Just when thought I was out of luck I came across Amazon’s Trade-In Program.

Amazon Trade-In allows you to trade in thousands of eligible items including phones, video games, books, DVDS, and more for Amazon e-gift cards. There is no required registration or listing, you only need an Amazon account. All you have to do is go to Amazon’s Trade-In page and search for the item you are trying to sell, choose the condition, and send it to Amazon. Amazon even gives you a prepaid label to ship it to them! I sold my Pokemon the First Movie DVD (from back in the day) through Amazon’s Trade-In program and got $18 for it!

Here’s how to do it:

1. Search for the product you are trying to sell and click on a listing (preferably one sold by the company or Amazon)

2. Look for the Sell yours for a Gift Card box (if it doesn’t have this box you can’t trade it in) and click Trade in now.

If you do not send the right item they will return it to you and you will not receive credit (this is coming from experience).

3. Select the Condition

For this particular item, there are only two choices good and acceptable. Choose the condition that best matches your item. Read the descriptions carefully since they vary between items.

4. Choose to Return item or Accept the price

You can choose to either accept the price or have Amazon return it to you at no cost. If you choose to accept the price, you could earn any amount in the range provided for your item. If you choose to return it for free, Amazon will inspect your item and if they won’t accept it in that condition they will return the item to you for free. If you do choose to accept the price, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get the lower end of that range. I have submitted items as acceptable or good and Amazon has given me more money than I initially picked.

5. Confirm Trade-In

Once you have finished choosing your trade in items, you can see what your total Trade-In amount will be. You can also see if any of your recently purchased items are eligible for Trade-In. Once you are done, hit Confirm Trade-In.

After you have finished your Trade-In, a shipping label and packing sheet will be available for you to print out. That’s it! You can check on the status of your Trade-In from your Amazon account under Your Other Accounts. Then click on the option that says Your Trade-In account. Amazon also sends you email updates to the email associated with your Trade-In account to let you know when they have received your shipment, and when your gift card is available.

I have made $120 of Amazon credit using Amazon’s Trade-In Program. It took me less than 15 minutes to do, and I would highly recommend this option for anyone looking to get rid of their unwanted items. While this won’t give you cash, you can use your gift card to buy anything on Amazon.

After purging my DVD collection, I now own one DVD and four seasons of Psych. I know this might seem a bit drastic to some people, but I can find any movie that I’d want to see online and stream it using our chromecast, or using free promo codes at Redbox. Most of the movies I owned weren’t being watched anyways, and now they aren’t taking up space in my apartment. As for my video game collection, I still have a console tower almost full of video games. What can I say, I’m a gamer at heart. However, while this might still seem like a lot, I sold over 30 games.

I purged our entire collection of unwanted or unneeded movies and games and ended up making almost $400 total in both store credit and cash through various places. Whenever I’m looking to sell something now, I always check Amazon Trade-In first.

Where do you sell your unwanted items? Have you ever used Amazon’s Trade-In Program?

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They really do. I had a few games that were supposed to be only worth 87 cents and Amazon bumped them up to $2 each (which wasn’t even a choice through the options). You’d be surprised how much some of your stuff is worth to Amazon.